I'm not sure if I've ever seen a film exactly like "Bubble". It kind of evokes other movies, but, overall, it's really it's own thing, totally separate from anything else I've really seen. It's an offbeat spin on the "love triangle" and "detective" subgenres while disguising itself so well with a realist, yet somehow still mildly surrealist (in parts) atmosphere so well that you don't really notice it's either one of these things in any sense. Instead, you are sucked into this quirky story that twists and turns in all sorts of unexpected directions. IMDb lists it as a crime-drama-mystery film and, for what seems like a majority of the movie, it does not feel like any of those genres. As a matter of fact, the first part of this movie feels like if the "meh" emoji (sorry for having to reference those f*cking things, but this was the best analogy I could come up with off the top of my head) was a film subgenre and this was the pioneering film of said subgenre. But, I still enjoyed it immensely...so it can't just be the cinematic equivalent of a "meh" emoji I guess, although there is plenty of mumbling and a really slow pace that softly grows on you as you watch it. There's the occasional moment of pure weirdness which is followed by a completely mundane exchange, often littered with a unique insight into the minds of your average everyday person and how they may not be so "average" after all. Daily life is more fascinating than anyone gives it credit for being, so sometimes it seems that something awful has to happen before we notice that this life we live isn't JUST some repetitive, boring streak of pointless years polluted with simplicity and labor. Life can also be mysterious, adventurous, and humorous, which is what this film really is. From one minute to the next, it evoked some kind of emotional response from me, and these responses ranged from being mild to moderate to major. There's laughter, there's tears, there's suspense, this movie's got it all but you don't even notice until you reflect on it. The movie also has long pauses, wooden acting, and awkward dialogue, but you don't notice that very much either, and when you do notice it it's because you're impressed with how realistic and successful these elements are, while in almost any other movie they'd be sort of cringe worthy, and not in a good, intentional way. It takes a true professional like Steven Soderbergh to create such a bizarre, contemplative, gloomy, depressing, hilarious, and engaging film packed with tonal shifts and a total lack of real good or bad guys feel more natural and realistic than most of the movies to be released during this century so far.

To call Bubble odd would be an understatement. To call Bubble a bad film would be a false statement. To call Bubble an offbeat yet enthralling experience would be a perfectly accurate statement. Bubble is set in a poor run-down town in Ohio. The town's economy thrives only off of a doll factory where we meet three people who work there. Martha and Kyle have been friends for a long time, both barely making ends meat, yet still getting along. Their relationship is shaken when Rose, a young pretty woman, gets a job at the factory. Questions get seriously raised when Rose is murdered in her apartment. An investigation then begins to find Rose's killer and strange and disturbing things are revealed about the people within this secluded ramshackle town.Bubble is directed by the always interesting Steven Soderbergh. By 2005, when this film was released, Soderbergh had already been an Oscar winner for five years after being nominated twice in the same year for Traffic and Erin Brokovich. The reason I bring this up is because it makes Bubble all the more peculiar. Bubble is the ultimate indie film. The entire cast was composed of unprofessional actors, a lot of the dialouge was improvised, and many of the sets were the actual homes of the actors in the film. I would love to know why Soderbergh decided to go backwards in filmmaking like he did, but the result of this choice was a fascinating film.It is the feel of calm mundaneness that makes Bubble so different and yet so head scratchingly good. The dialouge is all very natural speech and the conversations in the first half of the film are all just about normal things and it feels more like real people than movies that try so hard to pull this effect off. It is almost frightening how real some of the conversations and interactions are in this film. There are those simple moments where you realize the speech sounds just like you if you were in that scenario. At times I found myself questioning whether this was fiction or if Soderbergh had set up a tri-pod in these peoples houses and let them go about their business. I can't imagine how boring this film sounds when I describe it like this, but I swear it is not a boring film. The first half of the film has a sort of offbeat tension that carries throughout all of the little conversations and what is so exciting is how you can feel, deep down, that something is going to go wrong soon, and your curiosity takes over and you just can't wait to see where this film will go.When it does start to pick up, it doesn't let up. It keeps with the same type of monotone quietness, but suspense and tension unfolds beautifully after Rose is murdered. I don't know that the second half of this film would have been nearly as enthralling if not for the mundane first half that introduced us into a world that feels so real that the events that fuel the meat of this story are all the more gripping. Bubble boasts an incredible uniqueness in its storytelling and it is in a style that has been lost to the flash and grandeur of Hollywood. We have seen this basic type of story before, there is no denying that. But the incredible thing about it is that you believe this story more than any over suspenseful and over dramatic form of this plot. You buy into these characters in such a bizarre way. You aren't entirely sure why you are so gripped by this film, but you can't help but deny just how much you care about what is going on.Bubble is such a strange and perplexing film. It can only really be taken at face value, but its face value has a lot to offer. It tells an enthralling story in an incredibly unique and believable way. The way the pieces of this film come together in their quiet, dull, yet not anticlimactic, way is indescribable. This film could not have been made differently or it would have just been another unbelievable and boring plot line, but with Soderbergh's talent for capturing a story in such a unique light, he makes Bubble an incredible film.

Delightful little movie about the monotonous lives of everyday working class Americans. This is a film about love, loneliness, jealousy and rage. On the surface its a really slow paced film, in fact in some ways little of incidence happens throughout the entire film. But if you are willing to be patient with it you will be richly rewarded with both an interesting who-donit mystery and a much deeper tale of human suffering. Soderberg here makes use of real people, these are NOT actors, and it shows. That's not to say this is a bad thing, in fact it's one of the movies strengths, but it does take a little getting used to. At first it may seem like he is trying for deadpan humour or something but very quickly this feeling falls by the wayside and you instead get the feeling like you are looking through a window onto the lives of real people. In the end this is a story about the loneliness and emptiness in the lives of the working class, also a metaphor for any 'class', and how such emotional isolation and twist and tug on ones character.

In a small North American town, the middle age Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) and the twenty and something years old Kyle (Dustin Ashley) work in a doll factory. Martha nurses her old father and usually gives a lift to Kyle, who works also in the night-shift cleaning a shovel factory. When the young single mother Rose (Misty Wilkins) is hired to work with airbrush and stencils in the factory, she is befriended by Kyle and Martha. In a Friday night, Rose hires Martha to work as babysitter of her two year old daughter Jesse and Martha finds that she is dating Kyle. Rose returns back home early after stealing Kyle's savings, and Martha witnesses Jesse's father Jake (K.Smith) accusing Rose of stealing weed and money from his house. On the next morning, Rose is found strangled in her house and Detective Don Taylor (Decker Moody) interviews Jake, Kyle and Martha along his investigation."Bubble" is an extremely simple low-budget movie disclosing a tale of losers. The three lead characters have basic education only and spend their hopeless lonely lives in a small town without any perspective. Their greatest ambitions are traveling on vacation to Aruba (Martha) or buy a car (Kyle). The good point in this flick is the acting of unknown débutant actors and actresses, all of them with great and credible performances. The camera work is very simple, the identity of the killer is easily predictable and there is nothing special in this film but the mentioned top-notch performances. The shameful DVD released by Brazilian distributor Paris Filmes does not allow the viewer to access the Menu unless after watching advertisements and a trailer. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Bubble"